The apps recommended below were developed within the last two years. Grade levels are only suggestions; the individual child is the real criterion. PRESCHOOL A Present for Milo by Mike Austin (Ruckus Mobile Media) Kitten Milo chases a mouse until they reach—surprise!—a birthday party. Clever interactive elements and crisp sound effects accentuate the cleanly drawn […]

About eleven years ago, I fell in love with Miss Agnes. Kirkpatrick Hill’s The Year of Miss Agnes is one of my first-weeks-of-school read-aloud books. Miss Agnes’s loving but no-nonsense teaching methods inspire me every time I read it, which is just about every year. Now, more than a decade since that book was published, […]

The following books will receive starred reviews in the May/June issue of the Horn Book Magazine: Animal Masquerade; by Marianne Dubuc; trans. from the French by Yvette Ghione (Kids Can) Demolition; by Sally Sutton; illus. by Brian Lovelock (Candlewick) The Drowned Cities; by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown) Dying to Know You; by Aidan Chambers (Amulet/Abrams) […]

Katie Bircher braved the midnight show to report on The Hunger Games. In order to get Richard to go I think I’m going to have in turn see Footnote, an Israeli father-and-son drama that doesn’t exactly sound up my alley (anybody else who was bored by A Separation, raise your unwashed hands). But i did […]

Excitement was rampant at a March 23rd midnight showing of The Hunger Games (Lionsgate Films), director Gary Ross’s highly anticipated adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s bestselling dystopian novel. Before 11:30pm the theater was already packed, and our mostly undergrad-aged audience was impatiently waiting to see Katniss, the Capitol, and the Games brought to the big screen. […]

Beneath a Meth Moon: An Elegy by Jacqueline Woodson High School Paulsen/Penguin 182 pp. 2/12 978-0-399-25250-1 $16.99 Woodson takes us on the dark journey of addiction, mimicking the slow, hazy spell of drug use with the lull of her poetic prose. Laurel’s happy childhood on the Gulf shore ends abruptly when Hurricane Katrina destroys her […]

Adding to the media (and merchandising) madness of the new Hunger Games movie, fans in New York, Boston, Washington DC, and Philadelphia can work out like Katniss and Peeta at the “Train Like a Tribute” class offered at participating Sports Clubs (NYSC, BSC, WSC, PSC). The classes, free and open to nonmembers, are starting now at […]